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In writing
about alien immigrants to England and their reception in the sixteenth
century Laura Yungblut has identified a subject that has long cried
out for further study, both detailed research into particular features
of immigrant communities and broader overviews to incorporate the
accumulated wisdom of specialised journal articles, articles often
unavailable even in many university libraries. There is a yawning
chasm here rather than a gap in the literature and a new contribution
in this field is most welcome.
The last full blown study of this topic,
itself focusing largely upon the late Medieval and early modern
periods, is Cunningham's Alien Immigrants
to England, which dates back to 1897.(1)
The fact that this book was reprinted in 1969 after more than seventy
years speaks volumes, but although this reprint claims to be a second
edition the only novelty is a short introduction by Charles Wilson.(2)
Wilson is, of course, a most appropriate editor, for both in specialist
articles and in the general theme of his important text book he
has made a notable contribution to our understanding of the relationship
between England and the continent in the early modern period.(3)
Although his focus is upon the seventeenth century rather than the
sixteenth, it is surprising to find no mention of his work either
in Yungblut's historiographical survey or her bibliography, whereas
a textbook by Holderness, which contains but sparse reference to
immigrants, is mentioned in both.(4) It was also
surprising to see no reference to Scoville's, The
Persecution of the Huguenots and French Economic Development
or to Ormrod's The Dutch in London.(5)
Notwithstanding such omissions, Yungblut is surely right to emphasise
both the dated nature of the more general surveys and the limited
scope of some of the more recent publications.(6)
This said, no-one would want to undervalue the importance of two
recent monographs by Gwynn and Pettegree.(7) Gwynn
covers considerable ground, and Yungblut merely states the obvious
when writing that 'even this valuable work could not cover everything',
whilst it might seem unfair to describe it as 'somewhat limited
by its primary focus on the Huguenots' when that is its professed
subject matter.(8) Pettegree, in a remarkably readable
book, concentrates upon the stranger churches in London, but again
ranges more widely to examine economic impacts, social regulation,
and the reception of foreigners, and again it is surely unfair to
describe these discussions as no more than 'an offshoot of his examination
of the churches' activities'.(9) Nevertheless,
plenty of scope remains for work in this field, and Yungblut's call
for additional scholarship is justified and welcome.
This is also a topic for which original
source material is readily available. Immigration in the sixteenth
century was a highly emotive topic, arousing considerable comment,
concern and controversy which has left a firm imprint in the historical
record. Any scholar who has scanned the Calendars
of State Papers Domestic or Acts
of the Privy Council cannot have failed to notice the numerous
entries under this head, entries whose promise is so often fulfilled
rather than disappointed when one turns to the original documentation
amongst the public records. Local research is equally rewarding,
for here the concern was sharpened by the immediate impact that
the tide of immigration had. Furthermore, local and national concern
interfaced at many points, and hence local concerns and aspirations
find reflection in the records held centrally, whilst government
concerns and edicts were acted upon locally. In many sources of
a general administrative nature that survive - subsidy lists, local
rates and poor law records, occasionally parish registers and so
forth - aliens are separately identified, an example of such documentation
being included by Yungblut at Appendix A of her book in the form
of an extract from the Colchester Contribution Book to the Poor
of 1582-92. Given this it is surprising to find that Yungblut's
justification for focusing mostly on London is 'owing to data availability
and the fact that most policy making was centred there''. (10)
Data is readily available on both London and the provinces, it is
to be discovered in both national and local archives, and if policy
making took place in London
it was enacted locally and
reflected the aspirations and concerns of both the provinces and
the capital.
So what is Yungblut's own contribution?
Whilst the dust- jacket emphasises the contemporary relevance of
the book (it 'provides important insights in the history of immigration
and the search for a balance - as relevant today as it was in the
sixteenth century'), the author is aware that she is writing a history.
Despite her historiographical discussions, her own agenda is a strictly
limited one, and is defined by the book's subtitle: the numerical
presence of alien immigrants,
the perceptions of them by
the indigenous population and their consequent reception, and the
policies towards them pursued
by Elizabeth and her governments. In so doing she claims that the
study 'uses documents not previously analyzed as well as making
new use of more familiar materials', 'raises new questions, and
questions some accepted theories' and 'provides new insights into
the social and governmental impact of the arrival of the aliens''.
(11)
After the introductory sections Chapter
1 provides some background and some quantification, indicating that
whilst the alien presence in England was far from novel the scale
of settlement was of an entirely new magnitude after the mid- sixteenth
century. Pettegree, it is argued, has exaggerated the numbers in
London at the end of the reign of Henry VIII. (12)
The Low Countries and France replaced Germany and Italy as he most
prominent source of immigration, the immigrants coming for both
religious and economic reasons, and this combination of factors
resulted in 'the comparative floodtide of immigration which characterized
the 1560s and 1570s'. (13) Despite this, 'the
sustained size of London's alien population remained between 4,000
and 5,000 for most of Elizabeth's reign''. (14)
This of course creates either a paradox or a contradiction, explained
here in terms of the government's policy of dispersing 'substantial
numbers' of aliens to other locations, the effects of return migration
and the impact of the high death rates found in early modern cities.
Regardless of the exact numbers, there was clearly a perception
that the level of immigration was exceptional, resulting in more
frequent and extensive enquiries being ordered by the Crown, and
this perception was heightened by their tendency to concentrate
in specific (generally poorer) areas within the capital. (15)
In the provinces the south-east was overwhelmingly the favoured
area of settlement, the communities, it is suggested, were generally
smaller than that in London, and 'easily the most important' of
the provincial settlements was that in Norwich. (16)
Although it is useful to have various estimates
of the size of the London and provincial alien communities collected
together, there is little here so far to surprise the historian
of Elizabethan immigration, and little new research. Furthermore,
the quantitative information that is presented and its interpretation
is open to question on a number of grounds. Pettegree's figure of
5,000 or 6,000 is based upon a very sensible adjustment of the 1541
subsidy list, whilst Yungblut's decision to employ that of 1549
to produce a figure of 3,000 appears designed merely to create scope
for the subsequent 'floodtide'. (17) The figure
she cites for 1567, 3,324 is substantially lower
than the 4,534 found in 1562/3, and one wonders why the higher earlier
figures have been omitted from Table 2.(18) It
is clearly true that different surveys were conducted on different
bases, that some sources (possibly the subsidy of 1549?) may be
less complete than others and that the number of aliens in the capital
fluctuated quite markedly over time. But if the 'sustained size'
of the alien presence was 4-5,000, a figure similar to that found
in the early 1540s, then it is difficult to accept that this Elizabethan
immigration 'dwarfed the immigration of previous eras', except perhaps
for very short periods of time. (19) Nor will
Yungblut's attempt to resolve the 'paradox' do. High death rates
were most unlikely to have been new to London after 1558, there
had long been a return flow of immigrants to the continent, and
one would need more concrete evidence that aliens were removed to
provincial communities in large numbers before attributing the fall
off in the number resident in London substantially to this factor.
Perhaps Pettegree was right to argue that 'reports of enormously
inflated numbers of strangers in the capital should be seen more
as indications of concern than realistic estimates of the extent
of the immigration', at least before the late 1560s.(20)
It is clearly wrong to claim that the provincial
communities were invariably smaller, for that in Norwich stood at
between 4,000 and 4,700 during the 1570s and 1580s, making it similar
in size to the 'sustained' number in the capital, and far higher,
at roughly one-third, as a proportion of the town's population.
Nor was Norwich 'easily the most important', given that Canterbury
contained over 3,300 in 1592 out of a population of 9,000.(21)
At the very least, there is clearly scope for more careful consideration
of the extant quantitative evidence, as well as for further enquiry
into the causes of apparent fluctuations over time.
Chapter 2 turns to English attitudes towards
aliens. Here Yungblut develops her central theme of a traditional
English 'xenophobia', omnipresent but intensifying at periods of
actual or perceived distress, and resulting in 'a rising tide of
anti- alien expressions' during Elizabeth's reign.(22)
Governments, however both national and local, more commonly sympathised
with the aliens, because of their religious identity and the economic
benefits they brought, producing a more coherent and consistent
policy in place of the more ad hoc approaches adopted previously.
Nevertheless, the strangers had to be controlled and regulated,
corporation officers needed frequent reminders from central government
of their duties towards them, and even the Queen and Privy Council
harboured secret suspicions beneath their public support. Attitudes
frequently shifted from 'eager invitation and warm welcome to bitter
disputes and deepening hostility' whilst 'distrust of foreigners
was not limited to the lower classes'.(23) At
the root of resentment at the local level lay jealousy of the economic
success of the aliens, of the privileges they were granted to encourage
them to settle and suspicion that they favoured their own community
and failed to share their skills with the indigenous population.
The material contained in this chapter is
once again either entirely unremarkable, or questionable and even
contradictory. The existence of an ambivalent response to alien
immigrants, with both local and national authorities more commonly
appreciative of the benefits they brought and inclined to protect
them, is both well established and unsurprising.(24)
It is also well known, and equally unsurprising, that resentment
increased at times of economic distress.(25) Popular
attitudes were often far less favourable, and any attempt to play
this down would fly in the face of all the evidence of previous
research as well as that presented here, which so frequently refers
to resentment and hostility from 'the poor tradesmen', 'the meaner
people', or the 'clerks and apprentices', even if urban authorities
occasionally took the side of the poor and represented their complaints
to the Privy Council.(26) The one example of Sir
Nicholas Bacon is a wholly inadequate basis for the extension of
the purported xenophobia of the English into the realms of the upper
social orders. Indeed, the whole notion of xenophobia is itself
questionable, given the ambivalence of attitudes, the paucity of
evidence of concerted hostility, the general absence of violence,
frequent expressions of support for the alien communities, the evident
sympathy and financial support following the St. Bartholomew's Day
Massacre in 1572, and the manner in which immigrant families quickly
became established and integrated with the indigenous population,
the latter being a topic that clearly deserves fuller investigation.(27)
Nor can the notion of a 'rising tide' of hostility be sustained,
for this is contradicted by Yungblut herself, both for Norwich and
Canterbury.(28) Nor does such a pattern fit the
town of Colchester, where disputes in the early seventeenth century
appear to indicate growing confidence amongst native bay and saymakers
rather than a continuous escalation of jealous hostility.(29)
Finally, this all needs to be placed within the broader economic
and social context of a growing population, escalation of urban
poverty and vagrancy and enhanced migration to towns from the English
countryside as much as from overseas. To argue that the alien searches
assume significance because 'no corresponding record was made of
the native populace'(30) completely ignores the
growing tide of concern over urban immigration in general in the
later sixteenth century, which in some cases did indeed lead to
the taking of either comprehensive or partial surveys.(31)
Nor can the particular difficulties caused by four successive harvest
failures in 1593-7 be ignored. In this context resentment of successful
aliens is hardly surprising, and nor is it surprising to find hostility
reaching a peak, at least in London, in the troubled 1590s.(32)
The periodic 'scapegoating' of aliens is not, however, a sufficient
basis for the identification of either an underlying xenophobia
nor a 'rising tide' of resentment.
Chapters 3 and 4 cover government policy
towards aliens, with twenty-four pages - over 20% of the length
of the text of the entire book - dealing with the pre-Elizabethan
era. Government policy was informed by a number of concerns: fear
of social disorder and the spread of plague, religious sympathy,
the possible threat to national security, the requirements of international
diplomacy and the perceived economic benefits that immigration would
bring. Together this produced a dichotomy in government attitudes,
generally publicly supportive, encouraging and protective, though
more covertly suspicious, particularly at times of political intrigue
such as 1571, these suspicions gradually subsiding as the aliens
became more integrated and as any potential threat failed to materialise.
All of this is unexceptionable if mostly well known though one might
have expected to see some reference to fears that the Dutch and
French churches might be serving to encourage English religious
radicalism in the 1570s.(33)
In the economic sphere Elizabeth and Cecil
continued the policies of extending a welcome to skilled refugees
and periodically inviting specific craftsmen to settle, simultaneously
protecting them from periodic local opposition, regulating their
activities and taxing them to the full. Their key contribution was
the introduction of the 'new draperies', notably at Norwich, Colchester
and Sandwich. Other trades were also either newly planted or transformed,
including threadmaking, needle- making, silk, glassmaking, the extractive
industries, gunpowder, steel, paper manufacture, printing, sugar-refining,
saltmaking, starch manufacture, market gardening 'and many others'.(34)
Such a list might have been gleaned from Cunningham.(35)
No substantial new research informs this section of the book, there
is no attempt to consider possible theories of diffusion,(36)
and there is a particular gap with respect to the economic activities
of aliens in London, just now being filled in a Ph.D. thesis which
is on the point of completion.(37) There is also
a tendency to overstate the economic problems of mid-century.(38)
The inherent difficulty of quantifying the alien contribution is
noted, though at this point no reference is made to one of the few
articles that attempts to do just that.(39) Nor
does the author appear to be aware that some scholars have attempted
to play down the alien contribution, with greater or lesser justification.(40)
Again little is added to what is already known, and one is left
feeling that an opportunity has been missed.
There are a number of stylistic, presentational
and technical aspects of this book that could be improved. At one
end of the spectrum, there have been some type-setting or proof
reading difficulties that have led not only to the omission of a
number of full stops but also to the transposition of the titles
of Maps 2 and 3.(41) The use of the first person
singular intrudes at many points, and the book is riddled with repetition.
Textbooks are frequently cited in preference to more specialist
literature, whilst occasionally journal articles are cited for their
background discussion rather than for their specialist contribution.
There are a number of long sections of potted history, and excessive
background material for a book of this length. The Appendices are
problematic for three reasons. First, it is not clear at all why
these particular documents have been reproduced in preference to
others. Second, they are not discussed in the text, let alone fully
analysed. And third, the transcription of the Colchester Contribution
to the Poor Book is simply inaccurate in a number of respects, ranging
from a misreading of particular characters, to separating entries
that should be bracketed, the complete substitution of some names
for the true entries and the omission of other entries entirely.
This is a book that falls between two stools.
It is neither detailed enough nor informed by enough new research
to make a significant contribution to the specialist literature,
nor is it broad and comprehensive enough to replace the older, more
general studies that are available. Despite the promises made in
the introduction, much of the documentation employed is familiar,
most of the discussion merely reiterates what can be found in the
secondary literature, and where the conclusions reached have a greater
claim to novelty they are generally highly questionable. It is welcome
nevertheless, for it will hopefully achieve two goals. First, it
can only serve to draw attention to the opportunities that still
exist for more detailed research into alien immigration to England
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for both sources and
topics for further exploration are clearly available in abundance.(42)
Second, by arguing firmly for particular perspectives on aliens
and their reception in sixteenth century England it will undoubtedly
generate the type of debate or even controversy that is so commonly
crucial to of the progress of historical understanding. Indeed,
in this latter respect it already has already begun to achieve its
goal.
January 1997
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Footnotes
1. W. Cunningham, Alien
Immigrants to England (London, 1897).
2. W. Cunningham, Alien
Immigrants to England (2nd edn., New York, 1969).
3. C. Wilson, 'Cloth production and international
competition in the seventeenth century', Economic
History Review, 13 (1960); C. Wilson, England's Apprenticeship
1603-1763 (1st edn., London, 1965; 2nd edn., London, 1984).
4. Yungblut, Strangers,
pp. 4-6; B. A. Holderness, Pre- Industrial
England: Economy and Society 1500-1750 (London, 1976).
5. W. C. Scoville, The
Persecution of the Huguenots and French Economic Development, 1680-1720
(London, 1960), has numerous English references; D. Ormrod, The
Dutch in London (London, 1973), is a slim but useful pamphlet.
See also W. C. Scoville, 'Minority migrations and the diffusion
of technology', Journal of Economic
History, 11 (1951); Scoville, 'The Huguenots and the diffusion
of technology', Journal of Political
Economy, 60 (1952).
6. Yungblut, Strangers,
pp. 4-5.
7. R. D. Gwynn, Huguenot
Heritage: the History and Contribution of Huguenots in Britain
(London, 1985); A. Pettegree, Foreign
Protestant Communities in Sixteenth Century London (Oxford,
1986).
8. Yungblut, Strangers,
p.5.
9. Yungblut, Strangers,
pp. 5-6.
10. Yungblut, Strangers,
p. 6.
11. Yungblut, Strangers,
p. 8.
12. Yungblut, Strangers,
pp. 12-13.
13. Yungblut, Strangers,
pp. 18-19.
14. Yungblut, Strangers,
p. 21.
15. Yungblut, Strangers,
pp. 23-9.
16. Yungblut, Strangers,
pp. 29-35.
17. Pettegree, Foreign
Protestant Communities, pp. 16-17; Yungtblut, Strangers,
p. 13.
18. Yungblut, Strangers,
pp. 18, 21, 22.
19. Yungblut, Strangers,
p. 21.
20. Pettegree, Foreign
Protestant Communities, pp. 17, 279-80.
21. Yungblut, Strangers,
pp. 30-4.
22. Yungblut, Strangers,
p. 41.
23. Yungblut, Strangers,
pp. 45, 52.
24. For example, N. Goose, 'The "Dutch"
in Colchester: the economic influence of an immigrant community
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries', Immigrants
and Minorities, 1 (1982), pp. 269-70.
25. Goose, 'The "Dutch" in Colchester',
p. 271; Ormrod, The Dutch in London,
no pagination; Pettegree, Foreign
Protestant Communities, p. 291; Yungblut, Strangers,
p. 40.
26. Yungblut, Strangers,
pp. 43, 44, 47.
27. A start is made in Goose, 'The "Dutch"
in Colchester', p. 272. On support after 1572, see Pettegree, Foreign
Protestant Communities, pp. 269-70.
28. Yungblut, Strangers,
pp. 56, 59.
29. Goose, 'The "Dutch" in Colchester',
p. 270.
30. Yungblut, Strangers,
p. 80.
31. N. Goose, 'Household size and structure in
early-Stuart Cambridge', Social History,
5 (1980), pp. 349-57 and sources therein; P. Slack, Poverty
and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1988), pp.
65-6, 71-80, 88 n. 52.
32. Pettegree, Foreign
Protestant Communities, p. 291.
33. Pettegree, Foreign
Protestant Communities, pp. 274-5.
34. Yungblut, Strangers,
pp. 106-111.
35. W. Cunningham, Alien
Immigrants to England, passim.
Cunningham, however, singularly failed to emphasise the key importance
of the innovations in textiles.
36. E.g., D. Ormrod, in The
Economy of Kent 1640-1914, ed. A. Armstrong (Woodbridge,
1995), pp. 97-8.
37. L. Luu, 'Skills and innovation: a study of
the stranger working community in London 1550-1600' (unpublished
University of London PhD thesis, 1996); see also her 'Migration
and change: religious refugees and the London economy, 1550-1600',
Critical Survey, viii (1996),
pp. 93- 102, and 'Assimilation or segregation: communities of alien
craftsmen in London in the sixteenth century', in The
Strangers' Progress: Integration and Disintegration of the Huguenot
and Walloon Refugee Community, 1567-1889. Essays in memory of Irene
Scouloudi, ed. R. Vigne.
38. Few would accept that Cecil was 'faced with
crippling economic circumstances' (Yungblut, Strangers,
p. 101).
39. Goose, 'The "Dutch" in Colchester',
p. 267. See also Goose, 'Tudor and Stuart Colchester: economic history',
in The Victoria County History of
Essex, Vol. IX, ed. J. Cooper (Oxford, 1994), pp. 81-3.
40. E. Kerridge, Textile
Manufactures in Early Modern England (Manchester, 1985),
pp. vii-ix, presents an extreme denial of the importance of alien
contributions, and D. C. Coleman, 'An innovation and its diffusion:
the "new draperies"', Economic
History Review, 22 (1969), pp. 417-29 remains the better
balanced exposition. For a reassessment of the importance of home-grown
innovations relative to the German contribution in the metal mining
industries, see R. Burt, 'The transformation of the non-ferrous
metals industries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries',
Economic History Review, 48
(1995), pp. 23-45.
41. Yungblut, Strangers,
pp. 31, 33, 81, 86, 93.
42. The need for more research has been emphasised
quite recently elsewhere: N. Goose, 'Urban demography in pre-industrial
England: what is to be done?', Urban
History, 21 (1994), pp. 283-4. A collection of essays on
various aspects of immigrant communities in England in the sixteenth
century, to be edited by Nigel Goose and Lien Luu, is at an advanced
stage of planning. |